Major League Baseball deserves A-Rod mess

APMajor League Baseball got what it deserved with the current Alex Rordiguez controversy regarding steroid usage.

Major League Baseball has a big mess on its hands with this Alex Rodriguez story, wouldn't you say?

And they deserve every bit of it.

Why?

Because over the last decade, or so, while one drug incident or explosive admssion, or Congressional hearing, or tell-all book, or criminal investigation has pointed to the widespread use of performance-enhancing drugs in the big leagues, the people in charge have attempted to manage the problem away.

First they made believe it wasn't happening.

They stone-walled.

And they obfuscated.

And when the problem got too big and too unwieldy to sweep under the carpet, they tried to damage-control it away.

It wasn't just Mark McGwire. And it wasn't just McGwire and Barry Bonds, either. Or only McGwire, Bonds, Sammy Sosa and Rafael Palmiero, four of the Top 10 home-run hitters of all time.

The drug problem was deeper than even that.

Way deeper, it's turning out.

That's one thing Jose Canseco has right when he throws the entire hierarchy of the game under the bus. Canseco names names. Bud Selig. Donald Fehr. Gene Orza.

"Investigate them and you'll have the answers," he says.

I believe that's so.

And now we have A-Rod.

Another guy who denied and denied and who has now been forced to come clean.

Or, sort of clean, I should say.

Because what Alex Rodriguez, the active player most likely to break the all-time home run record of 762 homers held by the indicted Bonds, said to Peter Gammons of ESPN yesterday wasn't your real, full-throated confession.

For sure, Rodriguez admitted to using something at some point in the past. He copped to taking banned substances during the years from 2001 through 2003 when he played for the Texas Rangers.

"I was young," he said.

"Stupid," he said.

"Naive," he said.

"I am very sorry and deeply regretful," the Yankees third baseman told ESPN two days after it became apparent that Sports Illustrated.com had the goods on the 32-year-old.

So, Rodriguez was asked by Gammons, what sort of banned substances did you take?

And here was the kicker.

The non-answer of non-answers from a guy who had obviously been coached, and rehearsed, and lawyered-up like nothing more than agangster:

"To be quite honest, I don't know what substance I was using," was the response from Rodriguez.

Maybe he meant to say, "I don't know how to spell the medical name for the drugs I was taking."

Or perhaps, he really meant, "They called the stuff such-and-such, and they told me this is what it did, and this is how I put it into my body. But I'd have to sit down with an expert to better explain what I actually took and why."

Instead, Rodriguez kept the old game going. He told as little as he could get away with telling once he thought he was caught red-handed.

He admits he used something.

He's certain it was a banned substance of some kind.

But he does not know what it was.

Then how does it know it was banned?

Same thing with the whole story about speaking to Orza, the COO of the player's association, and being told "You may or may not have tested positive," after taking the drug test.

Um, really?

Doesn't everyone test positive or not positive after taking the test?

Isn't that why they administer the tests in the first place?

To see if there is a positive reaction or not?

Or is that Rodriguez and Orza spoke, and everyone knows it so the conversation has to have been about something.

Whenever I hear this type of talk from someone who swears they are telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, I think back to that great scene in the movie "Casablanca" when Captain Renault (Claude Reins) asks Rick (Humphrey Bogart) why he had come to Casablanca.

"My health. I came to Casablanca for the waters," says Rick.

Captain Renault responds: "The waters? What waters? We are in a desert."

Rick answers (with a shrug): "I was misinformed."

Like Rick, Rodriguez is saying whatever he thinks is easiest.

It's that simple.

Maybe that still makes the Yankees' star a better person than Roger Clemens, who just couldn't bear to stand up and tell any kind of truth, and who now will be involved in courtrooms and lawyers and despositions for the next decade.

And better than Bonds, who thought he could just say anything at all to anyone and not face any consequences.

But no one should have the illusion that Rodriguez is anything but one more player in a long, long line of current and former big leaguers who used juice of all kinds in their careers.